Source of cheater cords at garage sales: Salton hotplate

[wa2ise]

These things were sold or given away back in the 1960's. It's an electric food warmer that uses detachable power cords, which turn out to be cheater cords. Paid $2 for it so I could get the cheater cord.

Oh, you can find these on ebay, but that's too expensive to get a cheater cord.

The top has a glass panel with a resistive pattern printed on it.

[Olorin67]

i see a lot of these warmer plates at thrift stores too. in the 70s ever household had one it seems, common gift item- or item that kept getting re-gifted....

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by wa2ise

These things were sold or given away back in the 1960's. It's an electric food warmer that uses detachable power cords, which turn out to be cheater cords. Paid $2 for it so I could get the cheater cord.

Oh, you can find these on ebay, but that's too expensive to get a cheater cord.

The top has a glass panel with a resistive pattern printed on it.

I look for cords at the various thrifts and get lucky, once in a while.
The ones I have, has "Hotray" on the female connector. I make sure, I look at every store I visit.

[Olorin67]

I've lucked out lately for cheater cords, found 4 of them at another thrift store, they are white, not sure what they were off of, they had a bin of cords, and those were in there.
I also have a mid 60's GE hand mixer that uses a cheater-type cord, so it pays to look through any older appliances. Some of the larger heater cords might conceivably fit the large spacing of some 50s Zenith connectors.

[RetroHacker]

Modern "figure 8" style power cords, used by a lot of laptop power adapters, printers, and game consoles won't fit on a TV because the pins they're designed to plug in to are smaller, but the spacing is the same. I've had luck in the past modifying these by forcing a nail into the connector, and working it side to side, to stretch the contacts and widen the openings. They're still not a perfect fit, but they work pretty well.

-Ian

[Electronic M]

Been a couple of years since I last bought some, but ACE hardware carries (or used to) a real good cheater cord. It is white and was either a mixer or hotplate cord.

IIRC is was not significantly more costly that wa2ise's find.

I had to use one of the two I had on a set recently so maybe I should go buy another 2...

[Polaraligned]

These are probably polarized. Easy enough to get. It is the non-polarized ones that are in really short supply.

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by Polaraligned

These are probably polarized. Easy enough to get. It is the non-polarized ones that are in really short supply.

The ACE cords are NON-polarized on the TV end, but polarized on the wall outlet end (weird right?). I normally keep them for bench work (one on the bench and another upstairs with the daily use sets for spontaneous service), but one of them is now the official cord to my S-C branded Dumont RA-103.

[Olorin67]

I have a 60's GE hand mixer that uses a regular cheater cord, i've borrowed it a couple times for testing Tvs.. But that gets annoying when I want to make waffles and have to go out to the garage or basement to retrieve it.
I ran across a few cheater cords recently in a thrift store, they had a big bin full of cords and i was rewarded with 3 after digging through the pile and untangling them.

[6GH8cowboy]

All ATT power packs that plug the U-Verse power packs to the wall work perfectly as a non-polarized cheater cord. Even better than that, when a box gets changed out the power-pack does too. The stb gets refurbed and checked and the power pak and cords to the recycle bin. These cords are available for the asking. It is likely that other providers using the Cisco and Motorola stbs do the same thing.

Just an FYI